Case Study: Huffington Post boosts reader engagement with Ushahidi

A citizen journalism platform built to crowdsource personal accounts of privation and triumph during the Great Recession

The Huffington Post, a major online media publisher, sought an engaging way to cover the story of the US economic recovery from the Great Recession. Their challenge was to find a new angle that would increase reader interaction. They partnered with Ushahidi to use its open source software application as a solution.

Ushahidi implemented a customized version of its data-gathering platform on The Huffington Post's website. This solution collected personal testimonials via multiple channels and displayed them on an interactive map. The project, called First-Hand, successfully transformed reader engagement from passive news consumption into active news creation, becoming a vital resource for sharing and analyzing personal accounts of the financial crisis.

Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington

Founder